by Chris Simms
As he turned to retrieve his things from the rapidly encroaching tide, something bumped against his ankle. He looked down and saw a yellow duck bobbing its way past him. He spotted another, looked along the shoreline to his left and realised there were perhaps a dozen more of the things being washed up on the beach. Stiffly, he bent down and picked it out of the water.
The yellow plastic had been bleached by the sun and the blue paint at the edge of one eye had come away, giving the thing a cross-eyed look. It grinned up at him. Frowning, Brookes turned it over, feeling the faint rattle of droplets within. He studied the lettering stamped on its underside. Trademark and copyright stamps, then lettering: Kyou Inc, Made in China. No surprise, he said to himself. Everything seems to be made there, nowadays. He stepped clear of the water, dropped the duck into his bucket alongside the hurricane lamp, scooped up his sheets and spade then trudged slowly back up the beach.
Two
Jon Spicer leaned back in the hot water. A bath after work, he thought. Never in a million years would I have believed this would become a regular habit. But since Alice had kicked him out the previous year, retreating into a small room and lying there in silence somehow felt right. He listened to sounds as they lost strength and blurred in the steamy air. The high tones of a siren somewhere close by in the city centre, the noise of a band rehearsing in the renovated warehouse behind the apartment building he was in, muted voices from the television in the next room.
The song which carried across the narrow alley separating the two buildings suddenly collapsed, drums being the final instrument to fall silent. Shit, that was me. Sorry. Sorry. The female vocalist’s voice. Jon imagined the woman to be somewhere in her early twenties, a mess of dyed hair held back by a brightly coloured band. Maybe a piercing through a nostril or her upper lip. OK, let’s go again from the start, a male voice announced and the keyboard started up an instant later.
As usual, he tried to straighten his legs so the warm water covered his knees. No chance, he thought. The baths in these new-build city-centre apartments weren’t designed for someone well over six feet tall. Instead he pressed his chin into his sternum and watched the coating of black hair covering the thick muscles of his chest shift and sway beneath the surface. A drip slowly detached itself from the tap at the other end of the bath, hitting the water with a delicate noise.
He thought about his life and the now-familiar sense of not being able to control it. Despite all his promises to change things, Alice had refused to allow him back. Even if he gave up the job.
She’d shaken her head with a sad smile when he’d offered to do that.
‘And what would you do instead?’
‘I don’t know,’ he’d replied. ‘Retrain as something. Boiler technician – I saw an ad by British Gas the other day. They pay for you to do the course. You end up with your own van, covering a set area.’ Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he could tell they sounded absurd.
Alice didn’t even meet his eyes. ‘It’s your fortieth later this year. You’re a policeman, Jon. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Anything else would leave you miserable.’
‘Not if it costs me my family.’
He watched another droplet slowly swell, the bulb of water stretching a fraction before it fell. He sighed, mind moving to giving evidence the next day. He and his partner, DS Rick Saville, were due in court at two fifteen. A rape case with all the potential for the attacker to walk away because, at the end of the day, it was his word against hers.
He hoped his part in the agonisingly slow court proceedings wouldn’t take up too much time. It was Friday the day after tomorrow and he had his daughter, Holly, for the night. He needed some time to prepare: buy in some of her favourite foods, visit a toy shop and get her some stuff to play with.
In barely two weeks it was her fifth birthday. Where had the years suddenly gone? Nearly five and she was showing anxiety- related behavioural problems. He shifted slightly, his body pushing out a little wave that rebounded off the side of the bath then hit his shoulder with a quiet slap. For the past few months he’d had to endure the fact his daughter spent more time in the company of Mummy’s new boyfriend than with himself.
Dr Phillip Braithwaite. Jon felt his jaw grow tight. Maybe if the man applied some of his psychiatry skills to Holly, he’d realise that his presence in the house was part of Holly’s problems. A short burst of air escaped his nostrils. Why couldn’t the twat just piss off? Fat chance. The bloke was ingratiating himself, easing his way deeper and deeper into their lives.
The knock on the door caused him to flinch and he almost sat up, the instinct to cover himself strong. The door opened, dragging steam out with it, and Carmel Todd, thirty-year-old crime reporter at the Manchester Evening Chronicle, stepped into the tiny bathroom. ‘Brought you a brew.’
Jon lifted his eyes, took in her long, willowy figure and smiled.
‘Cheers.’
She lowered the lid of the toilet at the side of the bath, sat down and then placed the mug of tea on the corner. Jon leaned back, trying to appear at ease with being naked in front of her. How bloody ridiculous, he thought. You’ve been sleeping with her for weeks. What’s the big deal about her wandering in when you’re having a bath?
Her fingers began to caress the cropped hair covering his head. A thumb strayed down, brushing lightly over the thick scar that bisected his left eyebrow. ‘Which musical feast are we being treated to this evening?’
His eyes flicked towards the frosted glass. ‘Sort of Pink Floyd, but a bit faster.’
‘Any good?’
‘A bit ambitious. The singer keeps losing her thread halfway through.’
Her hand worked its way to the side of his head and a finger began stroking his ear. Don’t, he wanted to say. I can’t stand my ears being fiddled with. Instead, he stopped the movement by raising a hand to give her fingers an affectionate squeeze. She returned the pressure and he raised himself up slightly so he could reach for the mug. ‘What are you watching on the telly?’
‘Oh,’ she said half-heartedly. ‘Channel Four news. A special report about human-rights abuses in China. Your boxes are still by the stereo. You’re allowed to unpack your stuff, I hope you realise?’ A playful tickle at the back of his neck. ‘Especially if Holly’s sleeping on the sofa this weekend.’
‘Yeah, sorry. I’ll try and do it later.’ He thought about his last attempt to sort out his collection of albums and films. The way he’d packed when leaving the family home amounted to little more than scooping the uppermost DVDs and CDs off the shelves, placing them in a couple of old cardboard boxes then putting the remainder of his collection on top. As a consequence, music he hadn’t listened to in years was now uppermost in the untidy stack.
Looking inside a few days before, the first album he’d seen was Rum, Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues. Fond memories had immediately surfaced. Alice and him drinking in an Irish bar on Oldham Street as the album was being hammered by a group of laughing lads who spoke with the lilting accent of southern Ireland. They kept returning to the jukebox and selecting ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’, roaring delightedly along to the words, Guinness sloshing in their glasses as they waved them about.
He could hear the exuberant banjo, uilleann pipe and drums, taste the fug of cigarette smoke in the air. At some stage during the evening, he’d walked unsteadily up to the jukebox, slotted in a coin, selected ‘Dirty Old Town’ and then stood in the middle of the pub, pint raised to Alice as the song described kissing by the gasworks wall and dreaming dreams by the old canal.
Later that night, they’d walked along beside the Rochdale canal as it wended its way through the centre of Manchester, derelict mills and empty warehouses rearing up around them. He’d paused to lift Alice so she sat on the crumbling wall bordering the tow path and, faces level, kissed her as the song played on in his head.
‘It’ll be going cold.’
‘What? Oh, yeah.’ He lifted the cup and took a sip of tea. She’s fo
rgot the sugar.
‘Nice?’ she asked.
‘Perfect, thanks.’
‘Good.’ She got to her feet. ‘And another thing . . .’
He turned his head to see her gaze sliding slowly down the contours of his torso. With one hand, she swept her mane of blonde hair over a shoulder. The gesture was just a little too contrived and he had to concentrate on maintaining his unsuspecting expression. ‘If Holly’s staying over this Friday, we should get some action in tonight.’
He raised an eyebrow, while picturing the yawning expanse of her bed. The platform on which he’d have to perform, yet again. God, I’m getting old. ‘I’ll get this down me, then.’
Once she’d closed the door, he sat back and replaced his half-finished drink on the rim of the bath. What the hell, he thought, am I doing here? He let his eyes close. What other options did I have?
For the first few weeks after Alice had asked him to move out, he’d kipped in the spare room of the cramped flat his younger sister, Ellie, owned. But with his irregular hours, the impracticalities of it soon became apparent. After that was a room in a cheap hotel. But, even with a discount for booking by the month, the cost was too high to maintain on his wage.
Buying property was completely out of the question, so he’d begun looking at renting somewhere near the city centre. But prices had rocketed in the past few years. He remembered driving around the slightly cheaper areas near Withington one Tuesday afternoon. Students ferrying crates of bargain beer back to their flats. Clusters of uncollected bin bags in unkempt gardens, litter dotting the pavement. Bikes with their front wheels missing chained up to railings. The idea of living there was ridiculous.
When Carmel made a move on him one evening after work, a night of no-strings sex was too good to refuse. A little to his surprise, there was no hint of awkwardness the next morning. The arrangement grew in frequency until, a few weeks before, she mentioned that he may as well move in. Sharing the bills and rent would save them both a bit of money. Things would also be easier, she reasoned, if he didn’t have to go back to his hotel most mornings to throw on fresh clothes before heading into work. Unable to see any major drawbacks, he’d agreed.
The skin on the tips of his fingers had begun to pucker and the bathwater was growing tepid. He leaned forward, yanked the plug out and looped the chain round a tap. The plastic nail file which had been floating between his knees began to turn, slowly making its way to the far end of the bath. He felt a slight tickling on his ribs as the level of water gradually dropped. Now the nail file had begun to rotate on the spot directly above the plug, tilting upwards as the vortex of water gathered strength beneath it.
Soon it was almost vertical, the speed of its revolutions growing faster and faster until its tip finally made contact with the plug itself. It shook and trembled and eventually keeled over as the last remnants of water vanished.
Three
‘Twelve thousand US dollars? How many containers? And what’s the cargo? Flat-packed garden sheds? Export Cargo Shipping Instruction and Standard Shipping Note? And it’s cash they’re offering? OK, then make up a Bill of Lading and take it.’
Silence as the person at the other end of the phone spoke.
‘The fridges? What about the fridges? If they wanted a time-definite delivery for their fridges, they should have booked their fridges on a liner. Or put up the money for a time charter. They didn’t. They booked their fridges on a tramp service, so their customer gets the fridges when you show up with them. And that will be after you’ve dropped those garden sheds off in Melbourne.’
Slavko Mykosowski cut the connection, tapped a few details into the computer on his desk, then looked up. ‘These people.’ He glanced at the phone. ‘That idiot. He calls me any time he likes, not thinking if it’s night or day here in London.’
On the other side of the room was a sofa. The man sitting on it ran a forefinger over the thin loops of scar tissue encircling his throat. His cheekbones now jutted painfully through the stretched skin of his face and his eyes appeared a little too large for his head. He stared at the platter of food on the low table before him.
Mykosowski gazed across at him for a few more moments.
‘Come on, Valeri, eat.’ He patted his ample stomach, leaving the hand resting on an expensive-looking pale blue shirt. ‘God knows, I don’t need it.’
The man with the throat scars surveyed the spread. Caviar, smoked salmon blinis, potato salad, pelmeni, kulich. He waved a hand over the items. ‘Slavko, all I do is eat. And still this hunger will not leave me.’ Almost reluctantly, he forked a dumpling into his mouth and started chewing.
Mykosowski shrugged, turning to look out the window at the Thames stretching away below. Evening was settling in and light from the strings of bulbs stretching between lamp-posts had started to catch on the river. His gaze was dragged, as usual, to the circular shape of the London Eye. ‘You had an unfortunate experience. Little food for over a week, it’s no wonder you’re hungry.’ He paused to sneak a look at the other man. ‘I told you on the phone, I feel bad – really bad – about what happened. It was the rules, though. The master of the ship couldn’t turn back.’
Valeri held up his fingers to halt the flow of words. ‘There’s no need. Delivering the container took priority over everything. I knew that.’ He sat back, continuing to chew on his food. But you, he thought, jeopardised the delivery, didn’t you? You broke the rule by taking those migrants on board. And we wouldn’t have been out on deck when that monstrous wave hit if it wasn’t for that. He remembered the unstoppable force of water sweeping him over the side, one of the lifeboats falling just metres from his head. Then the impact, salt water filling his nostrils, mouth and throat. Gasping and coughing as he resurfaced, ducks and people all around him, looking up to see one of the containers slowly toppling over the edge of the rapidly receding ship, screams of the people trapped inside mixing with the wind. Beneath his skin, the ridged cartilage of his throat ratcheted up then slid back as he swallowed.
‘So,’ Mykosowski announced, one hand going to his mouse as he checked something on the screen. ‘Our phone calls have been rushed. You and your team were swept overboard. You drift for days before the fishing trawler finds you. Tell me what happened after that.’
Valeri let the memory of the trawler’s appearance form in his head. The joy they’d felt when they knew for certain it had seen them. The fishermen had pulled the four of them on-board then spooned thin soup into their mouths as they lay on deck, too weak and exhausted to move. ‘It took us back to land, the port called Liverpool.’
‘I know it; many of my ships call in there.’
‘They must have contacted the authorities while still at sea because there were ambulances and a couple of police officers waiting at the dock as we arrived. None of us had the strength to try and escape. I told everyone we would have to seek asylum, claim we were dumped from a container ship out at sea. It was the only way to buy time until you could sort something out.’
Mykosowski blinked nervously at the comment. ‘Then what?’
‘The ambulance took us to hospital and a doctor checked us over.’ He thought about that night. The sensation of lying in a clean bed and feeling it shift with non-existent waves. One staff member, a Russian girl originally from Moscow, had taken pity on her compatriots, sneaking them chocolates and biscuits from the gifts left at the nurses’ station. ‘Next day, immigration officers arrived to drive us to a big building near the river.’
‘All five of you?’
‘Four. Marat, Yegor, Andriy and myself.’
‘I thought you had four others in your team.’
‘There were,’ Valeri answered, seeing the knife once again as he plunged it into Sergei’s neck. ‘One didn’t survive.’
Mykosowski’s face dropped. ‘I am sorry, Valeri.’
He shrugged. ‘We were taken for screening, that’s what they called it. We were given numbers and sent upstairs to this big interview room. Your numb
er showed on a panel and they asked you for your name, date of birth, nationality.’
‘You had no documents?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And you said you were Russian?’
‘Yes.’
Mykosowski gave a cautious nod. ‘Go on.’
‘Then I was photographed, fingerprinted and asked more questions. Why are you claiming asylum? Where did you live in Russia? Who are your relatives? How did you travel here? Things like that.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I was a political activist, from Moscow. No family. Caught a ship from St Petersburg after the FSB came for me. Dumped in a lifeboat and found by fishermen.’
‘And the others?’
‘Same sort of stuff. The officer who questioned me wanted to know if we knew each other before getting on the boat, but I’d already instructed them to say we were strangers. At the end of the day we were driven, with about a dozen others, to a new place for the night. Next day, vans started taking us all off to other accommodation.’
‘Other accommodation?’
‘Flats. Rooms in tower blocks. Places where asylum seekers wait for news about their claim. I couldn’t stay in mine. They took my fingerprints, remember? I don’t know where that information goes. Interpol? Maybe further. So I came here as soon as I could.’
‘Which means they’ll be looking for you,’ Mykosowski murmured.
Valeri laughed. ‘They will. Here and in half the other countries on this planet.’
Mykosowski rubbed at his temples. ‘This is a mess. What about the others? Where are they?’
‘I’ve no idea. Somewhere near Liverpool, I suppose. Before we were separated, I gave them orders. They were to wait a few days then phone here.’
‘Here?’ Mykosowski looked horrified. ‘Contact me?’
Valeri’s voice hardened and the tips of his lower teeth showed as he spoke. ‘They’re sitting in shit-hole flats with nothing. Vouchers for food. That’s it. I served in the Russian army with those men. Marat? We did three tours in Chechnya together.’
